The state and evolution of Gold open access: a country and discipline level analysis
| Pages | 573-584 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-02-2018-0023 |
| Date | 17 September 2018 |
| Published date | 17 September 2018 |
| Author | Xianwen Wang,Yunxue Cui,Shenmeng Xu,Zhigang Hu |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
The state and evolution of Gold
open access: a country and
discipline level analysis
Xianwen Wang and Yunxue Cui
WISE Lab, Institute of Science of Science and S&T Management,
Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
Shenmeng Xu
School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA, and
Zhigang Hu
WISE Lab, Institute of Science of Science and S&T Management,
Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate the evolution of Gold open access (OA) rates in
different countries and disciplines, as well as explore the influencing factors.
Design/methodology/approach –In this study, employing the OA filter option of Web of Science (WoS),
the authors perform a large-scale evaluation of the OA state of countries and disciplines from 1990 to 2016.
Particularly, the authors consider not only the absolute number of Gold OA literature but also the ratio of
them among all literature.
Findings –Currently, one-quarter of the WoS articles is Gold OA articles. Brazil is the most active country in
OA publishing, while Russia, India and China have the lowest OA ratios. The OA percentage of Brazil has
been decreasing dramatically in recent years, while the OA percentages of China, UK and the Netherlands
have been increasing. There also exist huge differences of OA percentages across different subject categories.
The percentages of OA articles in biology, life, and health-related areas are high, while those in physics and
chemistry-related subject categories are very low.
Originality/value –With the availability of large-scale data from WoS, this study conducts a
comprehensive evaluation of the Gold OA state of major countries for the first time. The variation of OA
percentages is considered in light of the research profiles. OA policies in different countries and funding
organizations also have an influence on the OA development.
Keywords Open access, Web of science, Country comparison, Discipline analysis, Gold OA, Toll access
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
In December 2017, Web of Science (WoS) started to provide a new filter option of open
access (OA) status. Through the newly released OA filter option, the number of Gold OA
articles at different levels (e.g. countries, institutions, journals and disciplines) could be
measured. It also allows us to explore the evolution of OA status based on a large sample for
the first time. It may provide new insights into the acceptance and use of this OA option not
only by authors but also by WoS as a selective quality source.
There are two main types of OA: Gold OA and Green OA (Harnad et al., 2008). Gold OA
means that publications, either completely or partly, are available directly from the publishers
for free. Green OA refers to author self-archiving, which is the practice of depositing articles
(peer-reviewed articles and/or not peer-reviewed preprints) in an OA repository. This ca n be an
institutional or a subject repository, or a personal website (Laakso et al., 2011; Tennant et al.,
2016). In addition, Hybrid OA is an intermediate form of OA, providing opportunitiesfor authors Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 70 No. 5, 2018
pp. 573-584
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-02-2018-0023
Received 1 February 2018
Revised 3 April 2018
14 May 2018
5 June 2018
Accepted 19 June 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
This research was supported by the “National Natural Science Foundation of China”(71673038,
71503031) and the project of “Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities”(DUT18JC32).
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State and
evolution of
Gold OA
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